Flying to New York City on U.S. Air Force planes, the task force arrived the following Monday and began eight days of 12-hour shifts.

"The sheer size of it just amazed me," Hopper said of the collapsed World Trade Center buildings.

"I could not believe how enormous it all was. It was like what you would see in a war zone," he said. "Seeing it in real life is nothing like seeing it through the media or on television."

After being recommended for a position on the task force in 1997 by his supervisor at the Ponderosa Volunteer Fire Department, where Hopper formerly was a volunteer, he was trained for technical search and rescue. The department is located in northwest Harris County.

The task force has 186 members on three 62-person teams representing 48 Texas fire departments.

The task forces were formed in response to the Oklahoma City bombing tragedy.

"I never thought something like this would happen," said Hopper, a Tomball resident.

"The (New York) fire department was doing a bucket brigade clearing the rubble, but they aren't trained for the search-and-rescue part," Hopper said. "When a hole was found in the rubble, we were called in to crawl inside and search for survivors."

Search dogs and cameras also were used to find bodies buried under the rubble. He found no survivors.

"Whenever we found a firefighter," Hopper said, "we would carry him out and a priest would be called in to give that firefighter his last rites. We would cover him with a flag. All the workers would stop what they were doing for a few minutes and just pay tribute. It was the right thing to do."

Working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Hopper said they would crawl through tunnels underneath the collapsed towers. They could hear the creaking and shifting of the ground above.

"The machinery was working above us, so we would ask them to stop while we were crawling around underneath," he said.

"We were in the parking garage under the World Trade Center," he said. "There was no electricity under there, so it was dark."

After eight days in New York City, Hopper was happy to get back to his family, which includes a 5-month-old baby, but he hated leaving the task unfinished.

"We did want to get back home and back to our families, our regular routines, because there was just no way to stay until it was finished. It will be months before it is all finished," he said.

With more than 300 firefighters killed on Sept. 11, Hopper was intent on doing all he could.

"My biggest thing was to help the New York Fire Department," he said. "They want to find their men."

Spending the days pulling bodies from the rubble was difficult.

It took him a few days to talk about it once he got home.

"Eventually, everybody started asking me questions about it, so I will do a little training about what I learned out there," he said. "I'll tell them what I saw and how New York did some things."

Sugar Land Fire Chief John Wu said he is looking forward to the presentation Hopper is putting together for the firefighters.

"We like sending our men out to other jurisdictions so they can come back and tell us different things other fire departments do," Wu said.

"It was an experience," Hopper said. "Everyone wants to leave a mark somehow. This is something that will be in the history books. I know I helped and I'll have some type of legacy to leave to my kids and my grandkids.